Henry Clemens van de Velde (DutchDutch: [ˈɦɛnri vɑn də ˈvɛldə]; 3 April 1863 – 15 October 1957) was a Belgian painter, architect, interior designer, and art theorist. Together with Victor Horta and Paul Hankar, he is considered one of the founders of Art Nouveau in Belgium. He worked in Paris with Siegfried Bing, the founder of the first gallery of Art Nouveau in Paris. Van de Velde spent the most important part of his career in Germany and became a major figure in the German Jugendstil. He had a decisive influence on German architecture and design at the beginning of the 20th century.
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Henry van de Velde in the context of Weimar
Weimar is a city in the German state of Thuringia, in Central Germany between Erfurt to the west and Jena to the east, 80 km (50 mi) southwest of Leipzig, 170 km (106 mi) north of Nuremberg and 170 km (106 mi) west of Dresden. Together with the neighbouring cities of Erfurt and Jena, it forms the central metropolitan area of Thuringia, with approximately 500,000 inhabitants. The city itself has a population of 65,000. Weimar is well known because of its cultural heritage and importance in German history.
The city was a focal point of the German Enlightenment and home of the leading literary figures of Weimar Classicism, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller. In the 19th century, composers such as Franz Liszt made Weimar a music centre. Later, artists and architects including Henry van de Velde, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, and Walter Gropius came to the city and founded the Bauhaus movement, the most important German design school of the interwar period.
Henry van de Velde in the context of Eugène Viollet-le-Duc
Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (French: [øʒɛn vjɔlɛ lə dyk]; 27 January 1814 – 17 September 1879) was a French architect and author, famous for his restoration of the most prominent medieval landmarks in France. His major restoration projects included Notre-Dame de Paris, the Basilica of Saint Denis, Mont Saint-Michel, Sainte-Chapelle, the medieval walls of the city of Carcassonne, and Château de Roquetaillade in the Bordeaux region.
His writings on decoration and on the relationship between form and function in architecture had a fundamental influence on a whole new generation of architects, including all the major Art Nouveau artists: Antoni Gaudí, Victor Horta, Hector Guimard, Henry van de Velde, Henri Sauvage and the École de Nancy, Paul Hankar, Otto Wagner, Eugène Grasset, Émile Gallé, and Hendrik Petrus Berlage. He also influenced the first modern architects, Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe, Auguste Perret, Louis Sullivan, and Le Corbusier, who considered Viollet-le-Duc as the father of modern architecture. English architect William Burges claimed that "We all cribbed on Viollet-le-Duc even though no one could read French".
Henry van de Velde in the context of Jugendstil
Jugendstil (German pronunciation: [ˈjuːɡn̩tˌstiːl] ; "Youth Style") was an artistic movement, particularly in the decorative arts, that was influential primarily in Germany, Austria, and elsewhere in Europe to a lesser extent from about 1895 until about 1910. It was the German and Austrian counterpart of Art Nouveau. The members of the movement were reacting against the historicism and neo-classicism of the official art and architecture academies. It took its name from the art journal Jugend, founded by the German artist Georg Hirth. It was especially active in the graphic arts and interior decoration.
Its major centers of activity were Munich, Vienna and Weimar and the Darmstadt Artists' Colony founded in Darmstadt in 1901. Important figures of the movement included the Swiss graphic artist Hermann Obrist, Otto Eckmann, the Belgian architect and decorator Henry van de Velde, as well as the Austrians Otto Wagner, Joseph Maria Olbrich, Gustav Klimt, and Koloman Moser, among others. In its earlier years, the style was influenced by the British Modern Style. It was also influenced by Japanese prints. Later, under the Secessionists' influence, it tended toward abstraction and more geometrical forms.
Henry van de Velde in the context of National Railway Company of Belgium
The National Railway Company of Belgium (Dutch: Nationale Maatschappij der Belgische Spoorwegen, NMBS; French: Société nationale des chemins de fer belges, SNCB; German: Nationale Gesellschaft der Belgischen Eisenbahnen) is the national railway company of Belgium. The company formally styles itself using the Dutch and French abbreviations NMBS/SNCB. The corporate logo designed in 1936 by Henry van de Velde consists of the linguistically neutral letter B in a horizontal oval.